The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the field of Governance is called e-governance.

The ICT field has seen lots of technological advancement in recent time and India has been at the forefront of the IT revolution so ICT has facilitated the Government services and prepare them to serve the need of diverse society, It is the most recent paradigm in public administration.

E-governance means achieving the goals of public welfare state by using Information and Communication Technology in government activities and projects.

E-governance in India has started with the rapid adoption of digital technology in the Government departments, the government of India has launched the e-governance scheme in the country in late 90’s, after that the Central Government Approved the national e-governance plan on 8th may 2006.

The Plan consists of the 27 mission mode project and 8 parts to promote e-governance initiative in India.

The department of Information and Communication Technology and Department of administrative reforms and public grievances prepared the blue print of the national e-governance.

Five Important Models of e-governance:

1. Broadcasting Model- The model is based on dissemination, broadcasting of useful Governance information and it will also provide people with correct information.
2. Critical Flow model- The model is based on disseminating, channelling information of critical value to the targeted audience or into the wider public domain.
3. Comparative Analysis model- The model continuously assimilates best practices in the area of governance and use them as bench mark to evaluates other governance practices.
4. The e-advocacy- This model helps the global civil society to impact on global decision making process.
5. The Interactive service model- Under this model the various services offered by the government and it become directly available to its citizen in an interactive manner.

During the covid-19 pandemic, when the time comes for the Government and the administration to take immediate initiative to the citizen, the e-governance has become of of the goal in digital India.

Emphasizing e-governance in the general budget, the finance minister considered it as indispensable for good governance and High speed internet broadband will be provided in all gram panchayat to all the people under Bharat net scheme. The government will also seek the help from PPP public private partnership in order to implement the project, as per now about 2 crore villages are digitally literate under the Rural digital literacy campaign which is now been targeted by the government to reach to 6 crore soon.

Need of e-governance

• E-governance improves the efficiency and quality of the administration work and services which government has to provide to every citizen.
• The common data prepared by e-governance it can be used for various purposes. This strengthen healthy and transparent dialogue between the public and the government.
• Government will be able to make better discussion by analyzing these data’s while making various government policies and plans for the citizen.
• E-governance will also reduce the cost of work and an important step in order to control the corruption.
• It will increase the efficiency of work and services and simply the process government.
• Business and new opportunities will also be created through e-governance.
• E-governance will help in order to achieve the goal of inclusive growth.

National e-governance plan

National e-governance plan was launched in 2006. Its mission is to ensure competency, transparency and in order to provide reliability by providing common citizen access to all government services through common service center.

Some services has been provided to the citizen with the help of 3.47 lakh common service center and it has been spread across 2.3 lakh gram panchayats of the country to make common man access to more than 350 services.

Employment opportunities has been created for more than 12 lakh people and at the same time it has encouraged many entrepreneurs including women from village level. Now the government of India has developed a public digital platform based environment from ‘Digital India’ program beginning in 2015 and it has adopted a platform based approach instead of project based approach.

Digital platforms:

1. Direct benefit transfer- Direct benefit has been given to the citizens as subsidies had been transferred to their accounts which are linked to Aadhaar card and it has also reduced the corruption.
2. Digilocker- All the government records and documents are being safely uploaded in an online platform in order to digitalize all the documents like PAN,DL.
3. Pradhan mantri grahmin digital literacy campaign provided literacy in villages through digital platform.
4. Digital payments/life certificates
5. Digital platform for government procurement of goods and services.
6. Digital legal documents and E courts.
7. National scholarship portal.
8. E hospitals in which we can take online appointments of doctors and no need to stand in a queue.
9. E naam- it is a coordination and digital payment service of agriculture mandis.

Nationwide E-governance network

The government have launched the NIC, NET network as a nationwide communication network aimed at achieving the goals of e-governance.

Today NIC and NET playing an important role in order to do better communication between one government unit to another government unit and between citizens and government and business.

An important initiative is the national knowledge network, which provides a national network at technical level. It provides speedy connectivity to the premier research and academic instructions of the country. Data centers are also there which provides services and secure framework for e-governance applications, web portals and web sites with the availability of center services.

Challenges towards e-governance

1. The information revolution does not have an impact on the rural areas.
2. The development of information and technology has created a new division between the information technology based class and the disadvantaged class.
3. There are some technologies challenges before the government in which privacy, cyber attack are prominent.
4. There is a lack of necessary trainer to provide technical knowledge to local people and there is lack of resources to lower class people and rural people in the country.

Written by: Saksham Ahlawat - B.A.LL.B (hons) Chandigarh University, Gharuan, Mohali